A Weekend of Bad Press for Blair's Wars

Thanks for this trenchant summary of The War So Far: now what?

Not this, I hope:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Remnants_of_an_army.jpg

Hopefully on Tuesday MPs from all parties will unite, to show their disgust at this cesspit that Blair has dragged us into, to vote against the government.
A crushing defeat for Blair might be the final blow that breaks open the moral vacuum NuLabor has been operating in since they were first elected.
It might also encourage Gordimmo to finally slide his stiletto deep into Blair's exposed back.

Pic - Where's My Chinook?

This is not the obvious place for this but previous post on Blunkett may not be checked too often.

I have done an update for OhmyNews

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_class=3&no=325777&rel_no=1

following a Press Gazette story that someone from the Blunkett office phoned to object to the Channel 4 version of what was said.

There seems to be not enough press interest in this given that Blunkett now seems aware that he is open to comment. Previously he seemed to think most people would support his view. The UK is now getting to be a sideshow with the Official Secrets Act, apart from the people in court of course. The US is where the legal case has been launched following the actual bombing in Baghdad. If the Blair Bush memo was published it might show whether bombing Al Jazeera was discussed but maybe not much different to what Blunkett has already indicated on the assumptions in the UK war cabinet.

"..you realise that judgment is made by other people. If you believe in God, it's made by God as well"

So now it's God's fault as well! Is there no depth Blair will not plumb in his delusions?

You were a lawyer, Tony, try 'mea culpa'...

'40 per cent of army divisions report they are suffering from "serious or critical" problems'.

You mean to say we still have more than one division?

I say this in the slight hope that some MP's may read this blog....
Really it is time that you elected people of all political persuasion LISTEN to what the generals and the public at large are saying and accept the reality of the situation of what is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In fact I will plead with you to act NOW and use the debate to put an end to the carnage. Forget about the lies that were told and who told them and do something NOW.

And to think it could have all turned out so nicely with a little bit of forethought:

Resilience and Opportunity in Fourth Generation Wars

***********
Dick Cheney

Some damn fine comments, including A.Nonymous who said "... it is time that you elected people of all political persuasion LISTEN to what the generals and the public at large are saying" - to which I`d like to add that, as far as Iraq goes, a large majority of the Iraqi people have been saying that they want US/UK troops to leave. Our elected representatives should be listening to them as well as us - not Bush or the puppet government cloistered in the Green Zone.

British to evacuate consulate in Basra after mortar attacks. D Torygraph today.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/10/30/wirq30.xml

The British consulate in Basra will evacuate its heavily defended building in the next 24 hours over concerns for the safety of its staff....leave the building after experiencing regular mortar attacks in the last two months.....

There are about 200 staff at the impressive consulate building - formerly one of Saddam's palaces - including a team of bodyguards and ex-Gurkha guards. There were 12 full-time staff, some hand-picked by Tony Blair.

....While £14 million has been spent on refurbishing the consulate, including a new portico, hardened roof defences and swimming pool,...

Major Charlie Burbridge, the British military spokesman in Basra, said: "We believe very strongly that the Foreign Office and other agencies are critical to the long term solution in Iraq...

Perhaps if we hadn't knocked their Police Station down with 6 tanks and released their prisoners it may have been a bit different ?

Well that swimmming pool for the Consulate staff sounds a good idea.How much of the £14 Mn was that I wonder ? Enough to train the odd Helicopter pilot ?

Re: Criticism of the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq.
Please note that the establishment critics do not say the war was wrong, merely that it is not being conducted in such a way as to maximise the chance of winning it. By all means, continue to feel so happy at these critics should their concerns prompt a serious more deadly reformulation of the British Imperialist war machine, otherwise please point out that these critics goal is still that of an evil and immoral bent.

Secondly: It was ALWAYS the plan to split Iraq into three. To start moaning and wailing about Iraq’s break-up now as if it 'could' have been avoided 'if only things were done differently' (see above), reveals a narrow examination of history and politics.

When the US and UK imposed the illegal no-fly zones over Iraq's 36th northern parallel and the 32nd parallel to the south, it was apparent then, what the intention for Iraq was. All this rubbish about protecting the Marsh Arabs (who's media-politico usefulness expired some time ago) and the Kurds from gas attacks (courteously of Uncle Sam) was rubbish as all Imperialist lies are.

A Kurdish friend of mine who studied the political situation there as part of his PhD thesis told me that the Kurdish populated north had actually developed a semi-independent economy, and there were certain areas that were bountiful in terms of agricultural production. This production did not seem to make its way down the more central Sunni area.

This growing independence from Baghdad was known to the British and Americans for a long time, as of course was the geographical placements of Iraq’s oil.

Now we lead up to the 2003 second war against Iraq - the second part of the plan which started by giving Saddam false green lights to invade Kuwait (which had already been sliced of Iraq/Mesopotamia by the British many years back due to its abundant oil and ease of sea access). The genocidal sanctions had 'maxed out' and so phase 2 began, hence more lies about WMD's and Al-CIAda. The filthy liars at the BBC even reported that Saddam had tested a nuclear device! (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/correspondent/1191203.stm, http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2001/stirevnws01015.htm). Operation Northwoods like plots to get Saddam to fire on UN planes were discussed, Niger Uranium documents were created, utter lies of 45minutes claims were spewed forth from liars and murderers sitting in Parliament all with the full support of the corrupt Murdock media. March 2003, as planned, came into operation.

In phase two we saw evidence of covert ops teams conducting sectarian inducing atrocities upon the people of Iraq. Car bombings, shooting, disappearances etc, partly to hinder the mainly Sunni Iraqi Resistance from being as effective as they might otherwise have been - again supported by the backing of murderer Iyad Allawi,(www.truthout.org/docs_04/071704Z.shtml, www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2004/s1172158.htm) a CIA supported Shi'ite who helped create murder teams and shadowy arms of the blood curdling Interior Ministry as well issuing ultimatums on pain of destruction to cities like Falujah.

The only way the US could 'win' in Iraq (i.e. grab its oil and helping itself to its ancient treasures and artefacts in the process) was to split Iraq. Haifa is drooling at the thought of Kurdish friendly Iraqi oil gushing forth.

Of course Satanists like Bush say it not going to happen. Should we expect anything else???

I agree that the establishment critics are criticising the way these wars are fought rather than the wars themselves. I doubt they have any choice to do otherwise even if they wanted to, which they might well not. That these wars are wrong both morally and legally I take as a given. We have commented frequently on those aspects and, no doubt, will continue to do so. My aim in this post was merely to draw attention to the amount of bad press the wars received over one weekend and present it as a sort of round-up. It is one thing to conduct illegal and immoral wars, but quite another to fight them so badly that defeat is all but inevitable. Using the articles available to me, the thrust of the post is an exposure of the serial incompetence shown by the Bush/Blair axis and the difficulty (if not impossibility) they are going to have in extricating themselves from the two quagmires without serious loss of face and a worsening of an already terrible situation.

Another motive was to draw attention to today’s debate in Parliament which I expect will be interesting. Because the Tories stupidly signed up to the Iraq conflict, the only aspect they are going to be able to criticise is the incompetence of Blair’s prosecution of the wars and his deceptions rather than the wrongness of the campaign. If the Government is defeated (and that’s a big “if”) then there will be some sort of inquiry into the conduct of the Iraq war and perhaps other aspects can then be brought up.

It is very likely that the plan was to split Iraq into three from the very start. I have made that observation before, pointing out that it would be much easier for America to control small oil-rich states populated by a single ethnic/religious group rather than a huge country populated by diverse ethnic/religious groups. The example of Kuwait that you used is perfect. However, this possibility has never been admitted so frankly by America or Britain until quite recently and so Margaret Beckett’s statement is worth mentioning. Far from “moaning and wailing about Iraq’s break-up” I merely highlighted the British Foreign Secretary belatedly acknowledging something which seems fairly obvious (to me at least) and that has been widely predicted. I might be wrong but I don’t think that is revealing “a narrow examination of history and politics”.

I agree with you on your analysis on the build-up to the 2003 invasion. The scale of the scare-mongering, lies, distortions and propaganda was breath-taking. If I had been blogging then I would have mentioned it at the time, as it is, I have referred to those incidents plenty of times since as have others. Thanks for the link about Saddam’s nuclear bomb though, I didn’t have that. I have also mentioned the highly suspicious actions of British operatives in Iraq. I was particularly alarmed at the story of British soldiers driving around Basra dressed as Arabs in a car packed with explosives as well as the subsequent destruction of the police station when they were rescued. And I’ve reported on the destruction and theft of artefacts.

In short, what I was doing here was something different.

Davide Simonetti. Your initial post and defence of your post are both very good. I wasn't specifically referring to your good self, but more as a reminder to the sheep, that these criminals are asking for a change in the way the war is conducted (with consequential withdrawal should no change in current military strategy come about) and not because the war was, is, and always will be wrong.

I am unfamiliar with your previous comments on this issue but it seems you too saw the writing on the wall long ago. I do not consider you Davide, to be one of the sheep.

Your highlighting of the 2 British special-ops forces caught in Basra, is indeed one example of what I referred to, but the sheep fed on scrapey like Murdock media provisions, would use the same error based perception and simply have 'remembered' that it was just two British soldiers who got caught and were rescued by British troops. The real story and information that these British agents had killed Iraqi citizens, and had their special-ops arsenal exposed, will not be present in the neural connexions of Mr and Mrs Smith as is the total illegality of this latest nasty oil-grab.

The real question is I suppose; do the sheep actually read this wonderful site making my reminder useful? I certainly hope so.